Intro 0:00
Seth, welcome to the SEO insider with your host. Seth Price, founder of BluShark, is taking you inside the world of legal marketing and all things digital.
Seth Price 0:13
Welcome Jordan, the director of attorney education for Smoke Ball, to the Insider. So thankful to have you here today. Thanks for having me awesome. So I am so excited to have you here, because as both a law firm owner and agency owner, I know we know we are all scrambling to figure out how to integrate AI into our lives. And I know Smoke Ball has been very vocal and forward-thinking in that. But you also know that putting on your lawyer hat is one thing to talk about integrating AI into a firm, and it is another thing to actually do it. So I will use that as our thesis today. Jordan, what do you say when it comes to trying to figure out how to take the theory and the benefits of AI and actually deliver it to a law firm? It’s my philosophy about change management too.
Jordan Turk 1:00
Just in general, is, you know, start small and give the way you know to your clients and to your customers, specifically to your law firm. So for instance, at my old law firm, they would have these mandates about technology and say, Okay, we’re going to start using XYZ, but then they wouldn’t really tell us why. And so obviously, a bunch of attorneys and paralegals who are already overworked and underpaid, and now you’re saying, Oh, you need to learn this new piece of technology. But we’re not given a why. We’re just saying, Oh, this is what you know, powers on high have said, go forth and do this. So I think it does not help. And I think for morale for your firm, it absolutely doesn’t help. So first of all, you need to show your firm the why. So if we’re into implementing AI, why are we doing it? What’s it going to do? Is it going to save me? Right? Exactly, because, yeah, why do I want to
Seth Price 1:56
save a body that doesn’t do anything for them? You know? Is it? Is it going to make their lives better? Will they be home faster to their family? Like, what’s the advantage, right?
Jordan Turk 2:05
When I say about legal technology, including generative AI, is that if it doesn’t make me more money, or if it doesn’t give me more free time back in my day, I do not want it. And so same, same rule applies to showing your staff like, Hey, this is actually going to make your life easier. You just got to learn it. So I kind of equate it to what document automation used to be, where everybody was kind of going into it kicking and screaming. They were like, Oh, is this going to put me out of a job? Is this going to be more worthwhile? And then turns out, document automation is actually amazing, and the firms that use it love it, and that’s now, you know, part of their daily practice and workflows so generative, AI, is kind of the same to me, where I think everybody’s a little bit freaked out to start it, and lawyers are just a reticent bunch, myself included. But when it comes to AI, what I try to do is just start small. So starting with, Hey, let’s start using it to draft an email to a client and what that does and how it’s instant, it’s fully integrated into your practice management software. That means all I have to do is tell Archie, which is our generative AI product. Just say Archie, draft this email to the client about their upcoming deposition. Include XYZ, and then Archie will draft it. I click a button, it goes into Outlook, and then it’s sent, and then it’s automatically saved because it’s all integrated into your practice management software. So that’s kind of how I have them start, because, to me, the biggest bang for your buck with AI integrated into your practice management software, a lot of times comes down to emails,
Seth Price 3:30
right? And I see that on the, you know, it’s funny, because I see that on, you know, we use Gmail for part of the firm and Outlook for part of the firm, but Gmail now has this cool AI stuff, and that’s exactly where our first piece was, was like, Okay, guys, you know, like, even if AI scares you, you can, you can try it for drafting emails, and take a baby step in that way to just to get somebody who might otherwise not. Because my original goal was to have a chat GBT up on everybody’s computer and have them be able to play with it throughout the day, and that’s gotten me nowhere.
Jordan Turk 4:04
Yeah, no, what I like to do, and how well I started off is I take, I take some of my trials and tribulations, excuse the pun, with, for instance, opposing counsel, and then applying that to generative AI. So for instance, I’m in family law, so you know, all the drama all the time with that, and sometimes that also means drama with opposing counsel. So I would have to send these emails to opposing counsel. Sometimes you write that email to opposing counsel that you have not sent yet, and you take a step back because you can’t tell them that you hope they die in a dumpster fire. And so you draft the email, take a step back, go grab some coffee, and come back. And then you’re editing yourself, right?
Seth Price 4:40
You clearly didn’t see my LinkedIn post about my first deposition ever where I had, you know, I didn’t know what I was doing. I was scared to death. There was this woman across the table from me. We were going at it, and as soon as it was over, I was like, Hey, we’re in Iowa. We’re 35 minutes from Field of Dreams. Do you want to go? And we jumped in the car and went to Field of Dreams together. And spent the afternoon there. So, you know, yes, anyway, that’s what I digress. That’s
Jordan Turk 5:04
amazing. I just have a little bit of a rage problem, which I’ve worked on. But you know, as far as generative AI goes, a lot of times, it’s just changing and moderating your tone. So instead of me sending that email to the opposing counselor and having to edit it myself to make it nicer, I can go and just have generative AI do it for me and you.
Seth Price 5:23
know? And that’s the part that I do love about AI, right? So the other day, I played around with it. I, you know, I feel like I’m always behind the curve, even though I’m pushing myself as hard as I can. And I’ve done a few funny things, right? We saw it way back where you could, like, take it on social and write a much more flowery post than my very short one. But, you know, I think it is brilliant for that, because there’s a lot of pleasantries. My emails and texts are very short. That’s just who I am, who is the New Yorker in me, and the idea that you can put all thank you so much for that question. It’s, you know, I’m so glad that you asked. There are three different ways to look at it.
You’re putting all this stuff, rather than saying, “Hey, you turd like this is the clear, the way it should be”. It gives you all of those back and forth and words that I’m not going to take the time to write. So I really enjoy the formatting so much that I actually now put when I’m playing with it if I send it internally, I put written beat by AI below it, just so I don’t freak out my management team because we were doing our quarterly another day, and she’s like, I lost it because you sent this very beautiful, crafted email instead of the normal one said, stage. Oh yes, he’s playing with AI.
Jordan Turk 6:36
That’s amazing. Well, and we also, I’ll say this, we used to have a baby attorney that we hired who had a problem with tone, was a little bit too friendly, and all of their emails, yeah. So that’s just another training, you know, it’s just another training, you know, aspect of things where that baby associate could have used something like Archie to make her tone a little bit more professional, and then learn from that too.
Seth Price 6:58
So glad you I use the term baby attorney all the time. And when I was a baby lawyer, and nobody I’ve never heard of, most used it. So I’m glad that there are other people using the term, oh yeah, we exist. We were one. We need to remember, to go back to our roots. Exactly.
Seth Price 7:09
That was, that was the story for the field of dreams. That was literally, you know, a first-month baby attorney. No idea what I was doing. Oh
Jordan Turk 7:16
gosh, when you’re just trying to not commit malpractice every day of your life, yeah,
Seth Price 7:19
Like you wouldn’t even know what malpractice was if you committed it. Yep. And that’s another problem with AI, right? It’s like you have to kind of tell yourself.
Seth Price 7:27
AI is that baby attorney, you know? And there are parts of it where they’re able to figure stuff out. That’s genius. But every once in a while, there’s going to be a hallucination, and that to me, that’s where, you know, I mean, my number one mantra is, do no harm, and you’re always balancing like there’s risk in everything you do. Getting out of bed in the morning, my ethics lawyer used to tell me this, so it’s that balance. How do you balance that when sort of trying to work with people not just employees, but let’s think about whether it is a firm Owner? Very often you have direct reports and then mid-level managers, it may be several steps down. How do you make sure that the mindset of it’s a tool, but it’s not perfection, and that it could be hallucinating? How do you get the benefits without people taking it blindly as blind faith, and just putting it out there, as we’ve seen a few high-profile cases over the last few months?
Jordan Turk 8:23
Yeah, something in the water in New York, I think for some of those. But how I view it, and how I tell clients to treat generative AI is to treat it like it’s a bumbling summer associate. So it is very eager to please, and absolutely wants to provide you with the answers that you are seeking, but it’s not yet an attorney you would never trust its work product outright, right? A summer associate isn’t going to give you a brief and you’re immediately going to turn around and file it with the court. Never going to happen.
You’re always going to double-check that. You’re always going to site-check that. So I say it’s the same thing, as far as using generative AI, where you are responsible for the oversight of this program. So take nothing at face value, absolutely shepherd And side check your cases, and then go from there. But again, it’s just so eager to please, and that’s what kind of turns into hallucinations, right? Because it so desperately wants to give you the answers that you want, and so it’s going to sometimes make up some things in order to get there. So it’s on us to oversee that,
Seth Price 9:23
right? And I think that it is the analysis as a partner, I was that green associate. You know, you’re your associate, you can come up with hallucinations. And if you’re, and if you, if you treat it like a law clerk, that could be doing great work or, I mean, I’m not, I’m told about what they say anymore, but who’s off their meds that day? Don’t know what you’re getting and when that happens I think that’s why the managing attorney is the managing attorney, and is compensated accordingly, and has an ethical duty to supervise, because. Because otherwise, like, you wouldn’t be able to tell if somebody did something that was completely, you know, transposed. But if it’s completely gobbly, Gook, hopefully, the human can detect it. That’s the hope. Because when it starts making up a law that sounds convincing, next thing we know, we’re like, okay, there’s now we’re in real trouble.
Jordan Turk 10:20
Yeah, well, and you know, I remember one time I was mentoring a baby associate with my prior firm, and they’d given me a brief, and I’m looking at it, and I was like, I know this case backward, and forwards that she cited this holding is the opposite that she’s telling me. And so that’s on me, though, to go and double check and then talk to her and say, Hey, you gave me the wrong holding for this case. I do not know why, but let’s fix it. So, I mean, we’re prone to error. Generative AI is prone to error. It’s just, yeah, absolutely.
Seth Price 10:49
And I feel that as we evolve the hallucination is totally less. But even what they are, it’s just sort of like I would say, don’t you don’t check common sense at the door. The problem is, as it gets so good, and I think that’s sort of the fear of, like, you know, the self-driving car, it’s all great, unless it’s not, yeah, is it better? But at the same time, if you had associates or law clerks doing it, is it better than that, even with the mess-ups? And that’s where, you know, risk.
Jordan Turk 11:19
versus reward, right? Nothing ventured, nothing gained on that. And I think generative AI is the same, like the fact that I can go in it’s 10 pm the night before hearing I’ve spent four hours marking exhibits, and I want to die, and I’m ready to go home, and then I’m trying to get in my car, and then I remember, Oh, I haven’t drafted an opening statement for tomorrow, so then I can just go ask my generative AI program, which, by the way, is integrated into my practice management software. So it knows my entire case backward and forwards. It knows all of the documents that are in. It knows all the relevant information. So I can just say, hey, draft an opening statement for the temporary orders hearing tomorrow. Here’s what I want. Here’s my goal. Make it five minutes long,
Seth Price 12:01
Right? And in theory, what I’m hearing more and more is, you know, you know, there’s some this is, you know, make the style of Mark Lanier, you know, I mean, like it’s starting like it depending on the AI program that you’re on, if it knows who Mark Lanier is, all of a sudden, you know, you have to make sure you own it and it’s yours. But, you know, cloud, how would Clarissa do this? You know, it’s getting to the point where you can bring other people in that you couldn’t otherwise, and I think that’s awesome. So look, I know you’re a regular and a speaker at a tech show, what, what coming up? What are you most excited about? Like, what? What do you know about the tech show coming up in a couple of months? What do you know, when you go there, what are you looking for?
Jordan Turk 12:43
You know, AI is always the big thing. Like, what did we talk about before AI? Who knows? So that’s the biggest thing. I’m talking about, AI and family law, particularly, how you’re actually going to use it, you know, I feel,
Seth Price 12:54
But that’s again, you know, and that’s the doubt, isn’t that? The stress, there’s always a cool people person applying it and knowing when is this super valuable, and when is this just ChatGPT in a different private GBT in a different
Jordan Turk 13:07
than otherwise? It’s just this nebulous subject that exists, but nobody knows how, especially for family law, nobody knows how we’re using it inside of our actual practices. So that’s a big thing for me, is actually showing that, because otherwise, a lot of it’s geared toward big law, which is never going to be applicable for what I do, right? So it’s just nice to be able to hear from other attorneys, especially family law attorneys, how they’re using it. And then the other thing, which is kind of related to AI, but just in general, related to legal Tech, I feel like we hear a lot about all these, like, flashy articles that are about the death of the billable hour, you know, and how technology is going to do away with that, and how we’re all moving to a flat fee and things like that, which to me, I laugh at as a family law attorney. You hear these headlines, oh, the billable hour is going, it’s dying. Absolutely not in my profession. I would
Seth Price 13:54
argue that, if anything, the lawyers may want it to die. Yeah, I would love it, but it’s just, you know what we’re seeing, and part of getting pushed by ethics rules, but we’ve moved to milestones in a lot of places, which is a version of a flat fee, and that as a that is the area where, if you’re adopting AI, well, you have the opportunity to make more than your billable hour. Oh, to me, that’s the exciting part. Like, if you’re looking for the opportunity, like right now, assuming that you are doing everything by the book, you can make X amount per hour. You can add on some you know, you may have an associate, you may with a certain margin, you may have staff, but you’re that’s the most. Like somebody always says to me, I may have a family law firm that makes x, and I’m like, how many attorneys do you have? And I can very quickly tell within a reasonable amount whether or not that’s even possible, right? Because you know what maximum somebody could bill and the maximum number of hours you could build, you know, you know what’s. Never that much anyway. But to me, what’s exciting is you may get to the point where the billable hour should be dead, because you can do so much with that hour that if the value to somebody for the case is what today is, hypothetically, $400 an hour, and it would take you five hours, the person would pay $2,000 that you should be at some point able to say, you know, for $1,600 it’s done no questions asked, and that AI is going to allow only one hour of your labor. That’s the dream. That’s
Jordan Turk 15:28
the dream. But to me, an impossibility, like if you are some if, to me, if you are someone who practices a heavy litigation practice where I have no control over the emails that opposing counsel sends me or an opposing party, if they’re wonderfully pro se, I have no control over what the judge orders. I have no I have minimal control sometimes about what happens in that case, but I know that I have to respond to x, y, z, you know, if there’s discovery, things like that, not all cases need discovery, so at some point, I understand what you’re saying, and that would be the dream. But when it’s litigation, and when you have multiple hearings happening in a case, you know, maybe there’s three within a month, it’s just extremely difficult to say, stay available hours.
Seth Price 16:11
But the more you repeat players in a sandbox, and you know who the judge is, the more that the judge couldn’t switch out. You know, opposing counsel is, although that could switch out, you can start. And I think that, because I am a criminal law centric, our firm is criminal family and pi, but half criminal. So we were like one of the early, large, scalable, and I always said, think that we do flat fees and criminals, not by the hour. Essentially, you’re reverse engineering the needs of that client. And so again, I don’t think the average lawyer out there thinks this way, but when setting a flat fee, to a certain extent, you are reverse engineering the likelihood it’s going to go to trial, whether that’s included or not, you’re going to have the how much personal time does that client want? If you have a client who texts you questions, that’s awesome, but you have a client whose every text is a return phone call where they want to speak for a half hour. But
Jordan Turk 17:08
then the problem is, you don’t know that until they get onboarded. But that’s my point.
Seth Price 17:12
But as you start there are certain telltale signs and things you know that that is I’m looking at a future facing is that you’ll start to put data points in based on different demographics. You know, for example, I’m making this up, but under 35 is text-centric, and is going to take less time than over 50, where everything is a phone call. And I’m just saying, like, will it be perfect? I’m saying statistically significant. Where, if you had 10 people under 35 it’d be less client communication time, less time client communication, whereas where it’ll be more text heavy. I think that those things will start to happen over time. And then I already see it like, look, I when I did intake from my own firm. We have 50 lawyers now, and I think 30 people doing intake in some form or fashion. But when I did the intake, I could tell, based on the pause for me saying hello to somebody speaking as to whether or not there was money to pay for the case as there was, one factor I’d be wrong about Southerners. Throw that theory out. They just convert slower. But if you’re not a Southerner, and you pause too long between Hello, i My theory is that you don’t the time is not of value to you at the same level, and you’re likely not to kind of have again, I’m not hanging up on the person because they take too long to pause. But as game theory, I was able to pretty accurately determine the viability of funds based on the and I think that with time there will be opportunities for those who choose to start there were people like Lee Rosen. He was an early, early adapter, a family law flat fee. He ran and there’s a new guy. I just spoke to him the other day, who’s in the Midwest, who had a really neat firm doing flat fees and family, and it’s not a flat fee for the entire case, it’s in segments. And there’s all sorts of you know, pieces to it, but I truly believe that if lawyers master those pieces, which are not easy, that there’ll be opportunities to be Win-Win, where the client is taken care of better. It’s not like it’s going to be from a case that was 100,000 to a case that’s 20,000 but it’s a case that’s 100,000 to 80 where you’re not working. And I think the elephant in the room, very often you off the top, is those baby lawyers. Anybody who’s throwing a baby lawyer on a case. I know for years, many corporations that won’t allow baby lawyers to Bill they’re like all the first years you want. I’m not paying for it, and so nobody should have been paying for my first-year billables. And so the question is, how? And I think again, two things have happened. Are going into tension. Two things have happened over the last few quarters, which are virtual offices, virtual working, where it’s harder for the baby lawyer to become ingrained and trained, and now AI and so with people working off-site, I think that the mentoring is slower than it would be. Maybe I’m just old and I prefer it in person, the serendipity, but that’s one. And then secondly, the fact that certain things that you use in a first-year associate for document review and others AI is going to be able to participate in. And so that combination, I think, does. It’s not like I’m saying, Oh, the billable hours are gone. Forget about it, but I think it brings both of those things into question for lawyers intellectually to be thinking what comes next, because it may not be exactly as it is today.
Jordan Turk 20:49
I agree with what you’re saying. I’m just very curious to see how that plays out. I did. I specialized in high-asset divorces and child custody cases, and so it’s just very.
Seth Price 21:03
Yeah, and there may be, there may be thresholds in it that say we’re here for x number of hearings there. There are caps on what that is because you have to protect yourself on the downside. I remember there was a guy who signed a criminal case on a very high profile case years ago, dealing with lacrosse players in DC who signed for $4,000 and another guy had a billable rate on it. And it became a high profile. It was all over the news. He bit the guy billable, billed $100,000 the other guy had 4000 flats you know, there, there are places where you have to protect yourself. I just think that if you, if somebody as forward facing as yourself, that with time, you’re going to be able to handicap that and arbitrage that difference, that it’s not for the faint of heart, but I do, I do believe that there will be now, if you know your practice, you know I have friends in New York that Bill between 1015 $100 an hour on family law cases who are just badass. They don’t have SEO. They are the top three people in the city for what they do. And they get all the hedge fund people. Yeah, Bill, Bill, your, you know, your, your numbers per hour.
The question is, will it get to a point where, you know in a more mundane family law case, that you really do know, if you took all your family law cases and averaged it out in the criminal case world, you see this, and this was a game theory. I remember from way back, that we had criminal lawyers, and I’m trying to think this. This goes back 15 years. I’ll get these numbers right. Those who are charging $3,500 for a DUI and $1,500 for a trial, and we were losing cases to people charging $4,000 flat, interesting. And I said, including trial, yeah. And they were like, we can’t do that. I’m like, Okay, what number of cases go to trial? And make this up, but let’s say it’s one out of 20. And I’m like, What’s the true cost of going to trial? And I think the number was like, $8,000 so I’m like, okay, at $8,000 that’s that’s 800 that’s $400 per it’s almost like you’re, you’re, you’re anti in $400 per case. So essentially, if you in a perfect world, charge $3,900 per case, you’d be ahead of the game, theoretically, compared to 4000 as a flat fee. And there was sort of that moment. So okay, so like, okay, great. We’re gonna go with a $4,000 flat fee. Great. Now there was an issue, which was with flat fees, a higher percentage of people went to trial, right, sir? Like, I’m already all in. Why not? I’m already paid. Like, why not? Like, what the hell all the dice. So we had to come back with a hybrid that was like $3,900 for pre-trial and just a third $350 trial fee. We didn’t really want the money for it.
You just wanted somebody to think. I remember when my kids were little, there was an urgent care line at our pediatrician’s office. Have like, a $35 after-hours fee call anytime you need it for an emergency. There was maybe less. Might have been $15, it was something nominal. And I still remember to this day thinking every time I called, is it worth that? And ended up calling it Frank with a pediatrician instead. But my point is, it’s stuck to anything forcing it, and I think that those are you know, when you have these and you start to think about, how do you gamify, making sure that what? When you’re doing it, you’re thinking about what the repercussions are of including stuff in because if somebody does know that, it’s a flat fee, imagine how your phone’s going to ring comparatively,
Jordan Turk 24:50
Right? And I’ll say this when we do, for instance, for jury trials, we did kind of the same thing to the scourge jury trials, where we always take a separate deposit, and usually, it was somewhere in the neighborhood. 40 to 50 grand. So it’s like, if you want to do a jury trial for a Texas family law case, let’s go, but it’s absolutely going to cost you more. So I think that, as you said, kind of makes you really, that’s your way of saying, I really don’t want to be in front of a jury.
Well, it’s like, we absolutely could, but it is so much money, so it would depend on the size of the estate, if I’m trying to keep if I’m trying to be cost-conscious for the client, depending on what they have. You know, there’s a big difference between if they have a million dollars stay versus a ten million state, and now you’re going to blow 5060, grand because you decided to go in front of a jury, which I said wasn’t going to play well anyway. So it’s just a nice reminder to kind of discourage them, like, Hey, do you think it’s worth it that you’re going to spend this $60,000 in addition to your regular legal fees, just to try it in front of a jury, when we’ve already told you that? Told you that this is not going
Seth Price 25:43
to end. Well, awesome. Well, listen, I’m excited. You’re going to be speaking at a tech show. What are you talking a tech show about,
Jordan Turk 25:49
talking about AI and family law and then also, predictably, practice management, software and accounting reimagined. Well,
Seth Price 25:55
I can’t wait. The bane of my existence was when none of the case management systems would integrate with QuickBooks Online for years and years. It was now they do, but it took a long, long time. So I’m very thankful. Hopefully, the AI integrations and adaptation go a lot faster. Yeah, hopefully, say hi to Chelsea and Emma for me, and can’t wait to see a tech show. Sounds
Jordan Turk 26:17
good. See you later. Seth, thanks so much.
Outro 26:19
Thank you for tuning in to the SEO insider with Seth price. Be sure to check back next week for fresh insights into building your brand’s online presence. Episodes are available to stream directly on BluShark Digital’s website Seth.
